Thermodynamics approach to catastrophic optical mirror damage of AlGaAs single quantum well lasers

The time dependence of catastrophic optical damage (COD) was studied for the cw operation of AlGaAs single quantum well lasers with cleaved mirrors. An empirical rule is proposed, which yields the time for a COD failure in the form of a rate equation, containing a frequency factor and an activation energy. In this way COD is explained as a thermally activated process, depending on the mirror temperature.